Declaring that “our goal will be to
always put academics first,” Kermit L.
Hall, a constitutional law scholar and legal
historian, has taken office as the 17th president
of the University at Albany.

Hall, who previously served as president of
Utah State University for four years, was unanimously
approved by the State University of New York
Board of Trustees Dec. 29 for the position
of UAlbany president. His appointment formally
took effect Feb. 1.

“Kermit Hall’s accomplishments
as a scholar, teacher and administrator make
him superbly qualified to lead the University
at Albany,” said SUNY Chancellor Robert
L. King, who recommended Hall’s appointment.
King thanked University at Albany Council Chairman
George Philip and the Presidential Search Committee
for “a job well done.”

“I am honored and grateful that the
University at Albany Search Committee and Chancellor
King forwarded my name to the Board of Trustees
for consideration,” said Hall. “The
University at Albany is a great institution
of higher education and it will be a privilege
to lead the campus to a new level of academic
excellence. I am very impressed by the quality
and perseverance of the faculty and the students,
and our goal will be to always put academics
first.”

Within days of the SUNY trustees’ approval,
Hall was at UAlbany, meeting and talking with
faculty, staff and students and reaching out
to UAlbany friends and the community off campus.
He met New York Gov. George Pataki and other
state leaders at the governor’s State
of the State address on Jan. 5. Throughout
the month, he was back and forth between Albany
and Logan, Utah.

During one of his first days on campus, Hall
recounted, he came across a student on his
cell phone asking his mother if he should come
back home.

“He was clearly distressed, so I struck
up a conversation,” Hall said. “He
was a transfer student registering for the
first time and obviously uncertain about what
he was doing. When I asked him how he felt,
he replied that he was ‘worried, anxious,
and not sure if I can make it.’ I put
my arm around him and said that I was ‘worried,
anxious, and not sure that I could make it’ and
that he should take heart because I was also
the new president. We both laughed and his
spirits brightened substantially.”

While new to the campus, Hall says he has
been a keen observer, from afar, of the University
and the region for some time.

“For the past 16 months, I have consistently
used UAlbany and its surrounding communities
as examples of how public-private partnerships
can work and the benefits that emerge from
such collaborations,” he noted.

UAlbany and its host city and region boast “a
strong set of assets,” and his hope,
said Hall, is to use those assets “to
make the University an increasingly distinguished
academic institution – for students to
learn, for faculty to teach and do scholarship,
and for the community to take pride in its
success.

“We need to be at once an asset – economic,
cultural, and educational – for the state
that has chartered us, but we must also be
viewed increasingly as a player in the world
of international higher education based on
the qualities of our academic programs.”

Before serving as president of Utah State
University, Hall was the provost and vice president
for academic affairs and a professor of history
at North Carolina State University for two
years. He was executive dean of the College
of Arts and Sciences and a professor of history
and law at The Ohio State University from 1996-99.
He has held other academic and administrative
positions at the University of Tulsa, the University
of Florida, Wayne State University and Vanderbilt
University.

During his tenure as president of Utah State
University, Hall continued to teach undergraduate
and graduate courses in history, law and political
science and plans to continue to teach at UAlbany.

At Utah State, the land grant university of
Utah with 23,500 students and a $600 million
budget, Hall led efforts to improve freshman
retention rates, attract better prepared undergraduates,
and increase the number of doctoral students.
He also implemented a program for students
seeking nationally competitive scholarships
and worked to raise endowed dollars for scholarships,
increase resources for graduate fellowships,
and boost sponsored research. He attracted
$10 million for a new recital hall, the largest
single individual gift in Utah State’s
history.

Hall received his Ph.D. in 1972 from the University
of Minnesota. He earned his bachelor’s
degree from the University of Akron, a master’s
degree in 1967 from Syracuse University and
a master of studies in law degree from Yale
University in 1980. He is a graduate of two
Harvard University professional education programs:
the Harvard Seminar for New Presidents in 2001
and the Harvard Institute for Educational Management
in 1993.

Hall has written and edited 21 books on the
American legal and constitutional system, including
The Law of the Land: A History of the Supreme
Court (Prince Frederick, Maryland: Recorded
Books, 2003, fourteen 35-minute lectures on
the history of the Supreme Court of the United
States), The Magic Mirror: Law in American
History (New York, Oxford University Press,
1989; 2nd revised edition forthcoming in 2006).
He is also the editor-in-chief of the award-winning
Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the
United States (New York, Oxford University
Press, 2nd revised edition, 2005), and the
Oxford Companion to American Law (New York,
Oxford University Press, 2002). His books have
been main and alternate selections of the History
Book Club and the Book of the Month Club.

He was one of five Americans appointed by
President Bill Clinton and confirmed by the
Senate to the Assassination Records Review
Board in 1992 to review and release to the
public documents related to the assassination
of U.S. President John F. Kennedy. For his
commitment to openness in government, the American
Library Association bestowed its James Madison
Award on him in 1999.

Hall delivered the Freeman Butts Distinguished
Lecture at Indiana University-Purdue University
Indianapolis, the Milton M. Klein Endowed Distinguished
Lecture at the University of Tennessee, and
the Simeon E. Sobeloff Distinguished Lecture,
College of Law, University of Maryland. Hall
is a nationally recognized leader in building
high school/university collaborations in civic
education. He is the recipient of numerous
other awards and honors, including fellowships
and grants from the National Endowment for
the Humanities, the American Council of Learned
Societies, the National Science Foundation,
and the American Bar Foundation. He serves
on the boards of several professional organizations,
including the American Council on Education
(ACE) and the National Association of State
University and Land Grant Colleges (NASULGC).
While in Utah he was the recipient of the Cache
Valley (Utah) Chamber of Commerce’s “Outstanding
Achievement Award,” the “Triangle
Award” from the Pride! Alliance at Utah
State University, and “Utah’s Best
Hands-On Leader Award” from Salt
Lake Magazine. Hall also chaired for four years
the Utah Rhodes Scholar Selection Committee
and serves as a national panelist for the Harry
S. Truman Scholarship.

Hall was born and raised in Akron, Ohio. The
son of a tiremaker and a bookkeeper, he is
a first-generation college graduate and a Vietnam-era
veteran.

Hall’s selection capped a process that
began in October 2003 when President Karen
R. Hitchcock announced her resignation. Hall
was “the unanimous choice” of the
Presidential Search Committee, said Philip,
who served as committee chair. “We were
very proud and most pleased to forward his
name to Chancellor King. I would like to express
my deep appreciation to each of the members
of the search committee for their hard work
and selfless dedication to this extremely important
task,” he added.

John R. Ryan, president of SUNY Maritime College,
served as UAlbany’s interim president
from February 2004 until Hall’s arrival.
As King announced Hall’s appointment,
he praised Ryan “for his excellent leadership
of all facets of UAlbany during the search.”